Greener than green

Jim and Fiona Watkins got the idea while visiting relatives in

Maidenhead in the Home Counties. They started it, under a franchise

arrangement, in Ayrshire, where they live, collecting recyclable home

waste from subscribers' addresses every week and recycling it for as

much cash as they can get, the profits going to charity and, in

particular at present, the Ayrshire Hospice in Ayr. Bill Dunn of Alert

in Ayrshire has said: ''Green Box Recycle Company leads the field in

Scottish recycling. Others are talking; they are doing.''

The company collects from customers for #l.15 a week, payable

quarterly. Currently, it claims to be covering in those parts of the

county which it operates between one in 15 and one in 18 households.

Glass is taken to Renfrew District Council, which pays for it, and

Kyle and Carrick Council, which doesn't. Tins, cans and aluminium foil

are taken by Braehead Metals in Kilmarnock (The foil for 50p a kilo, the

steel fetching no payment). Plastic bottles go to the Govan Waste

Disposal Works of Glasgow District for no payment. Also destined for

Glasgow are clothes, Clyde Recycling in Bridgeton, paying anything from

#20 to #130 a ton, depending on types of material.

A question arises about paper and cardboard. Kyle and Carrick take it

but doesn't pay for it. Kilmarnock and Loudon will pay for what is

collected in its area. Therefore, why not Kyle and Carrick?

Jim has been running a meat wholesale company for 10 years and Fiona

is a psychology graduate. They have three daughters, aged from eight to

13, and the company has been helped this summer by the services of about

a dozen articulate, environmentally-aware students as a ''sales team''.

Clarke wi'

nae spark

CHANCELLOR Ken Clarke's reputation as a consummate political performer

took something of a drubbing at the Scottish CBI's annual bash in

Glasgow on Thursday.

The applause at the end of a lacklustre speech said it all, lasting

barely 20 seconds.

From mistakenly drinking the piper's dram on entering the hall to

forgetting to toast his CBI hosts at the end of his speech, our Ken was

having grave difficulty kick-starting the adrenalin after those long

hols.

He was upstaged on the one hand by the Very Rev. Dr William Morris,

using the grace to put in a plug for lower taxes on Scotch, and on the

other by some cheeky counter-punching from the CBI's new director

general Howard Davies.

''Never been lobbied so strongly in the grace before,'' brought about

the only Clarke laugh of the night. The Chancellor had to sit and take

it, as Davies had them howling with a series of provocative quips.

''We hope your promises last longer than the exchange rate policy we

heard about at this dinner last year,'' said Davies, reminding us all of

the Prime Minister's stout defence of the ERM days before the pound

crashed ignominiously out of it.

''The only Scottish enterprise not showing any signs of improvement is

the Scottish Conservative Party,'' continued Davies, warming to his

theme. ''But they are not CBI members.'' The Chancellor must have been

relieved to retire to his suite with his pressy -- a glass

trumpet-shaped tankard, made in Scotland, for a jazz lover who likes a

pint.

White and green wedding

VENERABLE adages like ''Support the team and wear the colours'' were,

sadly, bowdlerised in the crowd at St Columba's Pont Street, London, the

well-supported Church of Scotland charge, attended by the great as well

as the good, on Monday for the wedding of David Smith, the chief

executive of Cannon Street Investments, who also sits on the board of

Celtic FC, to Liz Hignell, one of the Cannon Street staff.

The rather smart affair did not draw coachloads of Celtic fans from

Glasgow but no fewer than seven of the bridegroom's friends and

associates in the City turned up at the reception in Celtic strips. They

also sang a Celtic song to the other guests. Smith, a Brechin lad, who

masterminded the assemblage of the financial package which became

Isosceles to take over Gateway, the supermarket chain, nips up and down

from London to attend matches and board meetings of the club.

The Scottish tabloid papers, which go gaga for peripheral geegaws

about the major teams, seemed unable to track down the wedding for

pictures. The Daily Telegraph took pride in commenting that had they

thought about it there was only one option for the nuptials for Smith,

whom it called a passionate Scotsman and the first Protestant director

of Celtic -- and that was St Columba's Pont Street. Possibly, however,

the Telegraph had not considered the Crown Court Church of Scotland or

even the bride's religious affiliations.

Canna be

sure about

canny

GLASGOW Publicity Club is celebrating its 70th anniversary and

informed John Struthers of Struthers Creations that it was seeking

attractive material of successful advertising campaigns produced in

Glasgow over the years.

John modestly made mention of his own ''Glasgow's Miles Better''

campaign of

several years ago.

However, he threw in a mention also of the Teacher's Whisky campaign,

which gave rise to a battle over Scotticism and semantics.

The nub of it was: Which is the right spelling/pronun-

ciation of the famous slogan?

(a) Ye canna whack a

Teacher (his choice).

(b) Ye canny whack a Teacher.

He argued about it with

Ronnie Anderson, a cultured, erudite man, who was then sales director

of Teacher's and later international director of the parent company,

Allied Distillers, at Dumbarton.

The first campaign was ''pick up a teacher . . . ye canna whack it''.

The next campaign was a development of the theme with the gowned gal,

''Ye canny whack a teacher'' (which struck me at the time as ignoring

the commonplace ambiguities of the English-speaking world over the Scots

word, ''canny'').

John, who insists he won the argument but the controversy has come

back to haunt him, tells me: ''I'll give a bottle of Teacher's to the

first six of your readers who write to you with a reasoned argument that

puts the matter to rest.''

Linguists, sportsmen and topers, preferably those who are a

combination of all three, are challenged to settle it.

Total eclipse?

ECLIPSE Direct, as you may have heard, is to be the name of the

holiday conglomerate that has formerly traded in the UK under the names

of Sunfare, Tjaereborg and Martin Rooks.

Tjaereborg, the company which grew from the foundation by a Danish

pastor of an organisation which arranged trips by Christians to the

Oberammergau Passion Play to an international travel operator, was

bought by Owners Abroad in 1988 and part of the agreement was that the

name would be relinquished in October, 1994. However, there have been

further talks with the Danish parent company to keep the name separate

but these have been unsuccessful.

Sunfare and Martin Rooks joined Owners Abroad in 1990. The three

companies have been working together while maintaining their separate

identities under the name of Owners Abroad. That's why the need arose to

select a new group name before winter of next year.

Adrian Woodcraft, marketing director of Owners Abroad, who was in

Glasgow the other day to promote the Summer '94 brochure of Sunfare took

the opportunity to explain the evolution of the new name, Eclipse

Direct. Marketing surveys had been conducted. Customers of the member

companies had been sounded and a big list of prospective names had been

tested on them. Sapphire had gone down very well with many of the

holidaymakers but the in-house people had plumped for another of the

possibles, Eclipse Direct.

A number of oddball titles had been proposed by members of the public.

One man had said that the name of holiday company did not matter to him:

''I don't care if you call it Chinese Laundry'' -- as long as the

service and reliability were commendable.

As for the possibility of Owners Abroad taking on the reflected and

appropriate glory of sponsoring the valuable and famous Eclipse Stakes,

the winner of which race at Sandown every July can lay claim to be the

champion racehorse of Europe, Adrian was interested but dubious. He

confessed he had never heard of the Eclipse Stakes.

Never heard of the Eclipse? Gad! Elderly punters sat back astonished,

strumming their lower lips and burbling:

''Ela Mana Mou . . .'' or ''Kris almighty!''

Drawn into

Glasgow

CATTO Animation of Hampstead, London, a company which is soon opening

branches in Paris and Munich, is to open one in Glasgow within about six

or eight months.

The company deals in unusual merchandise -- originals, drawn on

Celluloid, of animated cartoons for the cinema. People buy them to hang

them on their walls as modern art works.

''We had a market study done of the city and realised it is strong in

not only art appreciation but in informed

cinema-going,'' founder and director, Graham Parker, who has two

partners, told me.

Catto Animation buys from not only the Disney Organisation but

cartoon-makers all over the world like

the Czechs and the Canadians. Disney nowadays, of course, doesn't have

much on offer; it sells limited editions. A single production still from

Pinocchio is usually priced at between #20,000 and #30,000.

The firm holds one ''Cel'' from Mickey's Kangaroo, Disney's last

black-and-white cartoon in the 1930s. It is priced at #50,000 and it

hangs in the safe, says Parker, a man of Kent who is too young to

remember it.

Hail to thee blithe Shelley

P.B. SHELLEY, poet of this parish, as they used to say when he lived

in the big house up the road from Lerici, came in for a passing mention

among the brothers at Brighton this week, the Trades Union Congress.

Clydesider Jimmy Airlie, national officer of the AEEU in Scotland,

ended a speech on labour legislation by quoting from Mask of Anarchy by

Shelley:

Rise like lions after slumber

In unvanquishable number.

Shake your chains to earth like dew,

Which in sleep had fall'n on you.

Quick as a Mensa founder member, Arthur Scargill, leader of the NUM,

who advocated a more fighting riposte to Conservative Government

employment policies, politely reminded the audience that Airlie had

omitted to deliver the last line of that stanza:

Ye are many -- they are few.

A delightful Eng. Litt. interchange -- especially as the protagonists

were both in their earlier days members of the Young Communists League.

One scarcely doubts the scholasticism of both of them, but one is

tempted to recall the remark more than 20 years ago of Sam Gilmore, one

of Airlie's fellow fighters in the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders work-in:

''Jimmy picked up most o' his Communism in a fortnight in Renfrew Public

Library readin' room.'' Did he same time?

Switched off

SIMPLE was the question put to the public relations consultant on the

telephone: ''How many PR men does it take to change a light bulb?''

''Er, I'd like to check that. Gimme your number and I'll try to get

back to you.''